This dramatic adaptation of the Arcadia of Philip Sidney ­– a work well known in France, thanks largely to two published translations – was commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu and carries a political message: its treatment of the schemes of the wicked Cécropie (Sidney’s Cecropia) to subvert the state of Arcadia and secure the crown for her son, Amphyale, pretty clearly evokes, in an admonitory vein, Marie de’ Medici and Gaston d’Orléans. Nevertheless, Mareschal’s treatment both of this tragic subplot and of the comic main plot based on the love-manœuvres of two princes (one disguised as a shepherd, the other as an Amazon) shows that he took seriously the challenge posed by the mixed genre of tragicomedy. The result is a play which, on the one hand, clearly interpellates the supplement of Sidney’s original but which, on the other hand, in some respects actually goes beyond it.